


Lacrimosa

by FaceChanger



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Apocalypse, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-23 04:50:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/618267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaceChanger/pseuds/FaceChanger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The angel sighed and bowed his head. For a member of the army that had just vanquished Hell, it was a somewhat unusual gesture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lacrimosa

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [And So We Come Full Circle (Illustrated)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/423386) by [Hekateras](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hekateras/pseuds/Hekateras). 



" _In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."_

_-Genesis 1:1-1:2_

* * *

It is a little known fact that the world will end in neither fire nor ice, when it comes right down to it. Either might precede the end, of course, but when all is said and done, when the world is finally and definitively over, it will be as it was when it began. Namely, the world will end in water.

An angel, one of many, fiddled with the hilt of his sword as storm clouds amassed in the east. It was not a sight altogether unfamiliar to him. Something in him half expected a serpent to slither up beside him and make a sarcastic comment of some sort, but the silence stretched on beside him, marking the conspicuous absence of the serpent1. The angel sighed and bowed his head. For a member of the army that had just vanquished Hell, it was a somewhat unusual gesture.

He hadn’t wanted Armageddon. He had liked Earth, with its books and its sushi and its coffee shops and its ducks and its tragically, beautifully, human humans. But Armageddon was, fundamentaly, natural. It could be postponed, yes, but it couldn’t be stopped. Ruefully, the angel thought it could be compared to death in that way. Death could be postponed for what seems an indefinite amount of time, but it always sneaks up on you in the end. And what was Armageddon but the death of a planet and of Hell?

The angel had stopped the Apocalypse2 once before, a long, long time ago, with the help of a demon. More accurately, they had contributed insignificantly to the postponing of it. Humans had done the brunt of the work. Their superiors had blamed the angel and the demon, though, so when the orders came the second time, calling for the angel and the demon to join their respective armies, the orders were accompanied by someone to oversee their compliance. That the angel and the demon were living together at that point3 had probably done little to lift the ire of their superiors.

The angel clung to the memory of the demon’s face right before their superiors had arrived. The demon had had his sunglasses set aside for a moment, and his serpentine eyes had been glinting in the light. The angel had said something, he couldn’t remember what, that the demon had found hilarious, and a smile that reminded the angel that the demon came from heaven originally had taken over the demon’s face. Of course, the image shattered if the angel let it play out a moment or two longer; the demon turned a sickly pale, and his eyes went wide with horror, and he dug his nails into the angel's arm, and whispered words that the angel once thought a demon couldn’t say, and the angel couldn’t help wondering if that’s how the demon looked when he died.

The angel closed his eyes and stopped breathing. If he hadn’t, ragged sobs would have racked his body and, while he had been able to disguise them in the heat of battle, he wouldn’t have been able to then, when the other angels were, not exactly celebrating, but congratulating each other in a celebratory manner. He fixed a self-satisfied, somewhat righteous smile to his face in the hopes that it would be enough to deter any questioning angels.

The demon had been the first to receive his orders. They hadn’t thought to keep holy water on hand because they thought the apocalypse was over and there had been hundreds of years of noninterference by their superiors. It was a stupid mistake, of course, and, when Beelzebub himself had come for the demon, they’d been defenseless. It didn’t bear dwelling on.

The angel’s orders had come not much later, and the angel’s superiors had been displeased to find the angel ridiculously drunk and unusually contrary. The drunkenness had not lasted long, but the contrariness had taken a bit longer to pass. In the end, the angel had entered a state of sullen resignation. The battle had followed almost immediately.

It was a war, nominally, but not really. With the tactics that Heaven had employed, there was never any question of who would win. If the angel hadn’t known better,4 he might have thought that Heaven had learned a couple of tricks from Hell. The two sides had briefly put aside their differences and attacked humanity. The angel had not been allowed to participate in this part of the war; Heaven knew all too well which side he would take.

The battle had not lasted long; human weapons could have been devastating, but the angels and demons had passed among them unseen, slaughtering by the thousands. It had taken less than a day for the entirety of humanity to be destroyed. There was no Antichrist to save them, and no help had come in the last hour. They didn’t even have time to bury their dead.

The angel didn’t doubt that Hell had had some sort of plan along the same lines, but he’d watched in horror as the angels turned on the demons and began to massacre them in the same way they’d murdered the humans. It didn’t take the demons long to react and by that point the angel had been thrust into the middle of battle. Almost everything after that had been a blur.5 

Nothing remained now but the burnt shell of the earth and innummerable corpses, all of which would be washed away soon enough. Among the dead, the angel had seen the demon’s body, crumpled on the ground, sunglasses smashed beside him. The demon had been staring at the sky and the angel hadn’t even been able to close his eyes for him.

The angel had not seen the demon die. He had not seen a faceless, nameless angel thrust a flaming sword into him, or watched Crowley double over in agony from the blessed weapon. The angel prayed it had been quick. At this point he wasn’t sure that anyone was listening.

Ineffability had always been a comfort to the angel. It had been an explanation, an excuse for a God whose plan had no rhyme or reason. Now, though, it seemed little more than a flimsy apology for a being too cruel to care about the creatures he’d created. The angel took a careful breath as a question camed unbidden to his mind: was it so impossible that God was as flawed as the rest of them?

The angel wanted to stop that train of thought. It was a dangerous road to go down.

In seven millennia, the angel had never entertained even the shadow of a doubt. He had questioned his superiors, he had gone against orders, he had once stopped the bloody Apocalypse, but he had always, always, had faith in God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As the first raindrops of the flood fell, Aziraphale shielded himself with his wings, and Doubted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

1\. The absence of something expected is a surprisingly strong power. It sucks your attention in until you can’t ignore it in the same way that you can't ignore the annoying flap of skin that comes from biting the inside of your cheek too hard. For the angel, the absence of the serpent was not so much an impossible to scratch itch as an aching sensation, festering in the back of his mind.

2\. It was not referred to as the Apocalypse anymore, which was something the angel would have to get used to. It was now called the Victory or, more ominously, the Beginning.

3\. And had been for several centuries. Late night conversations that led to staying the night at each other’s flats gradually morphed into something more until the angel was selling the flat that he’d had since 1923 to some girl with nothing but an antique typewriter to her name. The demon had protested that the angel should have gotten at least a little money out of the transaction but hadn’t seemed too serious about his complaints.

4\. And he didn’t.

5\. Not everything though. There was a moment, in the middle of the bloodshed, when the demon appeared in front of the angel, and they stared at each other as if a thousand year trench stretched between them. Both had a haunted, dead look in their eyes. Both of their shoulders sagged with weariness. Only two feet separated them, and all the angel could think of was Zeno’s paradox, making that those two feet into an eternity, until the demon crossed the two feet in a single stride and kissed the angel. They stayed together for only a moment, which was not nearly long enough. The angel could taste the demon’s tears and his sweat and the dirt, and he could taste hope and longing and sorrow. The demon was gone again before the angel could blink.

**Author's Note:**

> First thing I write for Good Omens and this happens.
> 
> I am very sorry.


End file.
